Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Here we have got a $43 billion plan for the National Broadband Network, and when I say plan I am being very generous, because all we had was a couple of dot points on the back of a beer coaster. As the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and Senator Conroy were supping in the Air Force jet flying somewhere between Washington and Perth perhaps—no, the Prime Minister does not spend much time in Perth. Perth is a place that the Prime Minister has not really discovered on his map yet. But here was Minister Conroy supping with the Prime Minister and he only had a beer coaster to write up a few dot points on how they would roll out this $43 billion plan for the National Broadband Network.

It is critically important, as the minister has said, that we properly scrutinise this legislation. The National Broadband Network implementation study is a key ingredient for us to do our job in this Senate. Of course we should delay further consideration of this legislation until the government has finally come clean with the report that the minister clearly is desperate to keep secret. What has the minister got to hide, I would ask you, Mr Acting Deputy President? If the minister was so keen to get this legislation progressed, if he was genuinely interested in getting this legislation progressed, he would have by now complied with the request that has been put forward by the Senate on a number of occasions. Maybe it is part of the minister’s secret plan to actually delay this legislation further. Maybe he is sitting on this implementation study because it suits his purposes to slow the continuation of this legislation through the Senate. Who knows what the minister’s true intentions are.

What I want to place on record is that this is an incredibly secretive government and the Australian people should be very concerned about the lack of transparency and accountability that again and again is demonstrated by this government. We have seen it when they kept secret the studies and the underlying information to the economic modelling on Labor’s flawed ETS and we see it again here. Labor expect the Senate and the Australian people to take them on trust even though again and again they have demonstrated that we cannot take them on trust. We are quite right and we urge the Senate to follow our recommendation that this legislation should not be further considered.